The upstairs of this house is opened today

like pores in a steam room

by these familiar warm fronts

of coffee aroma.

There have been gaps between the people.

Once, only antiquity and basement mote

rose up, slowly filling the rooms.

Last week I slept here alone,

settled between the towers

of sealed banana boxes.

There were a dozen dozen ladybugs

weightless dead on stale blue rugs;

nothing flying nowhere

not scents, not noises, not furniture, not frames,

not family.

There is a smell of non-living in the loose carpet,

moving in the completely empty rooms

and lying casually in the vents.

A smell of the house lagging between two families;

an anticipation and a remembrance.

There are houses without a street or name.

I’d like to never move in,

but linger

in this eerie smell of non-living

that has no memory and no demands.